


no one can ever figure out what you want (and you won't tell them)

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Caranthir is a good brother and a good middle child, Caranthir is underrated, Fëanor's death, Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Rescue from Thangorodrim, Tirion, Triptych, title from Siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 20:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18105869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Three times Caranthir thought that Maedhros might like him best.





	no one can ever figure out what you want (and you won't tell them)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Victoryindeath2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Victoryindeath2/gifts).



You wake to the sound of crying.

At first you think it is the twins, but that cannot be right—for they are with Amil, and if they are unhappy, she will nurse them back to sleep. You miss the comfortable warmth of Amil’s arms around you, soothing _you_ —when you were the baby and belonged to her most.

You are years away from that, now, years away from being the youngest.

Atarinkë, then, must be the one crying. Atarinkë is still _very_ unused to being an older brother, and he cries whenever he thinks that it will coax Atar or Amil away from the twins to mind _his_ grievances instead.

Mostly Atar, rather than Amil. Atarinkë is very fond of Atar.

Tonight, though, Atar has gone to watch the stars rise with Káno and Tyelko, who do not ordinarily get on with each other, but who both enjoy the stars keenly. Tyelko likes to sketch the shapes of animals in them; Káno believes that they are notes of music for his harp. When Atar predicted Telperion’s gleam would not hinder their shining, this night, he rolled warm cloaks for them to carry and they left after supper.

You think that you saw Káno slip a bottle of wine in his pack.

You roll over, tucking your thumb in your mouth. Atar says you are too old for that habit, but he isn’t here to scold you, and you cannot stargaze with him and Káno and Tyelko, because you are too young.

A door opens and closes. That is Nelyo, going to fetch Atarinkë. You feel sorry for him—for Nelyo, that is—because Atarinkë doesn’t care for him much. He bites Nelyo’s hands and pulls his braids and kicks against Nelyo’s stomach when he wants to be put down.

Yes, you are sorry for Nelyo.

Atarinkë cries louder, and you hear Nelyo singing. Soft words, about a long line of green hills, about the gold buried beneath them. One of Káno’s songs. You shut your eyes, basking in the words, but you can’t bask for long because Atarinkë starts up his shrieking again.

You tug your thumb from your mouth. Then you reach under your pillow, and you sigh, and you carry with you what you found there down the hall to the room Atarinkë shares with Tyelkormo.

(You will sleep with the twins, when they are old enough. Three brothers in a room is not fair, but you did not say so when Atar decided how it should be.)

“Nelyo?”

“ _Ai_ ,” he sighs, catching sight of you. “Little one, I did not mean to wake you, too—”

“I _was_ awake,” you tell him, which doesn’t seem to do much good for the furrow between his brows. You hold out your hand, and when Atarinkë—writhing and wriggling in Nelyo’s arms—sees what you hold he stops crying at once.

“Carnistir,” Nelyo says softly. “You do not have to…”

“I want to.” There are fat tears gathering in your eyes, for this is _hard_ , but you want to help Nelyo and this is the only way you know how.

Atarinkë’s hands close on your wooden bear. Atar made it for you, when you were smaller than Atarinkë is now. You love it dearly.

Nelyo lays Atarinkë in his bed. Atarinkë shuts his eyes, content, and holds his borrowed treasure close.

You push a smile onto your lips, because maybe that will stop the tears. You blink and smile and blink, but it is not quite enough—and then Nelyo’s arms are around you, lifting you up.

His long fingers card through your hair, gentle and soothing. Nelyo is warm—not quite as steady-burning as Atar, but you press your face against his neck and you find that you are no longer cold, and no longer crying.

“You are generous,” Nelyo whispers in your ear. “Generous, Carnistir. Thank you.”

 

How you hate this land. How you hate the cold, the grey, the way you’ve come to welcome warmth as a pleasurable cruelty, clinging to your hands and your sword in gobbets of black blood.

It is worse when the blood is not black at all.

(You were with Atar when he died. You all were. You watched his pale skin glow and crumble like wood at white heat, wood in a forge-fire, wood like something unmetalled, something that could not stay. You heard Atarinkë _scream_ , hoarse and wild, as if he was no longer young or old, cunning or reckless, son or brother. You felt rather than saw how Nelyo forced his arms around Atarinkë, holding him close. There were tears on Nelyo’s face. You could taste them in the air, mingling with the ash that was Atar. It was burnt and flat like any other ash.)

“You should rest.”

Nelyo is one to talk. You frown darkly in the face of his relentless, exhausted beauty, knowing that if you open your mouth you will say something boorish and stupid. That is how you have been, ever since Atar died. Maybe even before that.

(Nelyo loved him longest. Atarinkë loved him best. You scrub the heels of your hands against your wind-burned cheeks. Does everything burn, here?)

(You say, in your mind, “ _I will rest_.” Then you do not.)

“I think you are a fool,” you say, as if you are twenty years old again, barely reaching Nelyo’s elbow. Then you remember who you are, and what he is, and you gasp with shame. You fall on your knees—you wouldn’t do this for anyone else, not even Atar—and you say, “Forgive me, king. I—”

Nelyo laughs. It is the first time you have heard him laugh since Losgar—since before Losgar. “Oh, get up, Moryo,” he says. “Get up and tell me why I am a fool.”

No one else is here. Macalaurë has gone to his tent, stormy with anger. Turko and Atarinkë are keeping each other’s counsel. Pityo is nowhere to be found.

And here, at the edge of camp? The guards are pacing their rounds; the tents are shuddering in the spears of the breeze. Nelyo sits down on a wide lip of rock—one Atar used to stand upon to make speeches—and gestures for you to sit beside him.

You do.

“So,” Nelyo says, and he does not look at you, but his face is bright and perfect in profile, in the dark, “Tell me. Why am I a fool?”

Makalaurë told him, in no uncertain terms. _Moringotto keeps no promises! He will not parlay! It is a trap._

 _I know it is a trap_ , Nelyo had answered. To some ears, his tone might have sounded as soft as it did in Tirion, but you know him too well. You know all of them too well, even if they don’t know you. There is no softness left in Nelyo—at least, none he shows readily. None that he carries on his brow, as he does the circlet that marks him, half-willingly, as king.

“I will die if anything happens to you,” you say.

“That _would_ make me a fool,” Nelyo answers. “To let you come to harm.” His fingers curl against the rock’s edge. You love Nelyo’s hands. They are elegantly shaped, of course, but you remember them better for their ability to patch up scrapes, to wind braids in your hair. His braids were not as tidy as those plaited by Makalaurë, but they were gentler.

“Do not treat with Moringotto,” you say. You have no skilled arguments; indeed, you have no skill. You do not fight as well as Turko. You do not persuade like Makalaurë. You have none of Atarinkë’s cleverness.

(You wonder why you call some brothers by their mother-names, some by their father-names. Even now, your family is a tapestry you can only understand by unraveling.)

“I do not trust him,” Nelyo answers. His hair snaps around his face, lifted by wind, vibrant as flame. “Yet I feel it would be cowardice, to hide behind these flimsy walls and let him believe us weak. Also—”

 _The Oath._ The Oath leads him, leads all of you. Nelyo was the one who began again the words of swearing, his voice dry as if scraped by sand, when Atar lay dying.

“You are not a fool,” you say miserably. “I think I am.”

He turns to you now, and he smiles, and it is the Nelyo smile of old. “Oh, Carnistir,” he says—not _Moryo_ , or _Morifinwë_. Just the red-faced name that you hate and love the most. “Sometimes you are the only one whom I can bear to listen to.”

 

Findekáno is guarding Nelyo like a dog. You are reminded of Huan, and it is on the tip of your tongue to tell him so, but Turko and Curvo have already made things difficult so you bite down your words, for once.

“I want to see him alone,” you say, when Makalaurë has led the rest of your brothers back to the edge of Ñolofinwë’s camp. “Can I?”

Makalaurë has been to visit several times in the past two weeks. This is the first time he negotiated the presence of all five of you.

In answer, Findekáno narrows his eyes at you. Likely, he sees you as a kinslayer and betrayer, and not one whom he is ready to forgive. “Why?”

“Why? Because he’s my brother, you thrice-damned—” You stop short. This is not what you meant to say. You take a breath, and then another, and then another, and that is too many breaths and your face is flushing.

“I will not hurt him,” you say. That much is true. You would never hurt Nelyo.

(But why did you not save him? Why was Makalaurë the one you followed—why did thirty years find you to be more of a coward than a fool?)

Findkáno looks no less suspicious, but he stands aside. “Five minutes,” he says. “Then my father’s guard will escort you and your brothers from our camp.”

Inside the tent, your breath does not come easier.

Nelyo’s hair, cropped short, is the dull color of dried blood. Nelyo’s only hand, on the ghostly sheet, is black with new bruises, yellow with old. Nelyo’s face—

“Carnistir,” he says. His voice, in the air, tastes like ashes. “Come to do what Findekáno will not, despite being repeatedly asked?”

You’re not quite sure what that means, but you don’t like the words. You stand with your hands—both of them—jammed in the pockets of your tunic. You always have your tunics made with pockets. Curvo thinks they look awkward, and tells you so.

(“ _Forgive me, my king_ ,” you say in your mind. “ _For deserting you. You were always in my thoughts and in my heart_.”)

“It had better been me,” you say. “I was already the ugly one.”

That is the worst possible thing to say, but it is out before you can help it. What will Nelyo _feel_ , to hear himself called ugly? To hear the paltry offering of one who could never have taken his place?

Nelyo’s thin shoulders relax a little. You realize that he had been hunched, as if waiting for a blow.

“How long did Findekáno give you?” he asks. His face is so mangled that it takes you a little while to see that he is smiling.

“Five minutes.”

“He must be very angry.”

“He is.” You pause. You ask, “Are you?”

“I am not anything,” Nelyo answers quietly. “Not anymore.”

There are fat tears gathering in your eyes. You blink, and blink, but they do not recede. You feel them slip beyond your hold. You feel them fall.

Nelyo stretches out his hand. It takes two motions: an aborted gesture with his empty right, and then a crook of the twisted fingers of his left. “Sit.”

You do.

“Carnistir,” he says, and maybe there is no softness left, yet you want, badly, to hear it there. “Carnistir, we are such fools.”


End file.
